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How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?


Probus

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Posted (edited)
21 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

I understand it was a simple case of”d#$k gets hard, brain gets soft!”

Robin Williams had a great gag about men having both a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to run one of them at a time.

Edited by JonS
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500k casualties projected by end of May

■ Most engagements & 2nd-highest casualties 2024 so far

■ Equipment losses slightly above average; artillery in last 7 days at a record height

■ Massive 🇷🇺 missile strikes but a fair share of them intercepted

🇺🇦 air & artillery strikes combined in GSUA's report; close to 7-day average

■ Oryx: 100 🇷🇺 45 🇺🇦; 30-day ratio of 3.0x, >3k tank losses confirmed

■ Poternet: +287 🇷🇺 names added to database

https://mastodon.social/@ragnarbjartur@masto.ai/112410337183781506

https://lookerstudio.google.com/s/p7It5EGgQ9c

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17 hours ago, Probus said:

Trump is a loose cannon that can't keep his mouth shut, that's for sure.  But putting on my magic thinking cap, I'll bet dollars to donuts that if Trump gets elected he will do a 180 on support for Ukraine.  He is only against the war right now I'll bet because the current administration is for supporting Ukraine and it gives him talking points.  If Biden were to have been more isolationist, Trump would have lambasted him for it. But that's politics.

War, unfortunately, is big business and Trump, if nothing else, is a businessman.  Now that NATO is starting to pull their own weight, as you say, he'll take credit for that too.

While I'm no fan of Trump, I think he will actually end this war if he gets elected. And I think he probably will be.

It won't be a happy peace though. Just like with Afghanistan, the US pullout will leave behind a complete mess. But Trump can at least say it's not a mess paid for by US taxpayers. And I think that carries quite a lot of political weight at the moment, both in side the USA and internationally in a time when many people are losing faith in the US as a guardian of the whole western "rules based order".

In both Ukraine and the US, a stab-in-the-back story will then emerge, claiming that the war could have been won if it had not been for perfidious Trump suddenly dropping the ball. Whether that is true or not will be a subject for historians for decades.

European countries will not protest much, and will quickly change their official narrative to align with the new US position. They will however continue to invest much more in their militaries and slowly drift out of the US orbit. Americans will finally achieve their wish of having Europe pay for our own security, but it will come at the cost of a lot of the American political influence over us.

Both America and Russia will come out of the war worse than before. The US will have lost a lot of political/cultural/moral authority, whereas Russia will be more physically and economically weakened and isolated.

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A good and longish article about the use of AI to detect land mines with drones. The first two thirds are about how they got there and the situation in Ukraine. If you are more into the technical details then skip to the part after the map.

TL;DR: they managed to be as good as a professional human deminer (for both with visuals only) albeit much faster (>60 football fields per day & drone). They hope to improve by adding more sensors (thermal & magnetic).

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-drones

 

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One point missed on the Trump thing:  he has borrowed money from RU oligarchs.  We know this because his son admitted it on video ~10 years ago or so.  He was mocking the US banks the wouldn't loan to the serial defaulter anymore and said (paraphrase) 'we just borrow from RU instead'.  Also RU oligarchs had bought some of his properties at oddly non-market prices, leading to some wondering about money laundering.  So when we talk about what Trump would do we need to recognize the very high probability that he is on some level a leveraged RU asset.  And his behavior toward Putin/RU has certainly been like that over the years.  

Plus Zelensky refused his extortion racket which led to Trump's first impeachment (he was completely guilty, by the way).

So pretending he'd be doing anything statesmanlike or diplomatic is absurd.  He would serve Putin and abandon Ukraine.  

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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

While I'm no fan of Trump, I think he will actually end this war if he gets elected. And I think he probably will be.

Not really for this forum but don't be so sure, so quickly..

Trump can't even get 100% votes of the core Republican base. Nikki Haley who stood down from the primary campaign has gotten close to 20% of the Republican base in vital swing states without campaigning!!!

There are a lot of Republicans that won't be fooled a second time around and will vote Biden instead.

You should look more carefully at what is actually happening than assume he will win. There are some strong headwinds, and not just his potential jail time for contempt of court.

Personally I would comfortably bet some donuts that he won't be reelected...

 

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Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

While I'm no fan of Trump, I think he will actually end this war if he gets elected. And I think he probably will be.

It won't be a happy peace though. Just like with Afghanistan, the US pullout will leave behind a complete mess. But Trump can at least say it's not a mess paid for by US taxpayers. And I think that carries quite a lot of political weight at the moment, both in side the USA and internationally in a time when many people are losing faith in the US as a guardian of the whole western "rules based order".

In both Ukraine and the US, a stab-in-the-back story will then emerge, claiming that the war could have been won if it had not been for perfidious Trump suddenly dropping the ball. Whether that is true or not will be a subject for historians for decades.

European countries will not protest much, and will quickly change their official narrative to align with the new US position. They will however continue to invest much more in their militaries and slowly drift out of the US orbit. Americans will finally achieve their wish of having Europe pay for our own security, but it will come at the cost of a lot of the American political influence over us.

Both America and Russia will come out of the war worse than before. The US will have lost a lot of political/cultural/moral authority, whereas Russia will be more physically and economically weakened and isolated.

Ignoring Trump for the moment as I personally don't think that he is the determining factor.  The war will not end regardless of the US.  This is Ukraine's decision and EU support will continue.  Not sure why you assume the EU will just follow the US on this.  What could happen is a drop in US support levels but there are many in the GOP who want to continue support for Ukraine to the point they helped force the vote in the house despite Trump.  It is worth watching the response to MGT's motion to vacate on C-Span.  She got booed from both sides of the aisle for what was essentially her reaction to Ukraine aid passing.

Russia has made clear what it wants from this war and those demands are not ones Ukraine can or will concede to.  If there is a push you can be sure that references to Munich "peace in our lifetime" will be blasted everywhere.

Edited by sburke
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1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

This is the kind of thing I would like to see more of:
 

 

And especially if Trump wins. The price of those weapons will be charged by the accountants against our 'NATO bill'. Everyone will be happy: Trump has made a deal, Ukraine has the weapons and the balance is the same for us.

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2 hours ago, dan/california said:

 

Hey question for those that might know. I hadn't really thought about but a friend asked me and all I could say was "beats me":

How are they keeping these long range drones in contact with the remote pilot? The US has said they don't want the UA doing this so they probably are not using the US satellite network and starlink has been denying them usage in Russia. So how are they doing this?

Clearly for 10s of Kms and maybe even 100s of Kms you can just use a radio carried by the drone to stay in contact to a location in Ukraine.  Over 1000Km wouldn't that just take too much power and be too weak a signal?

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23 minutes ago, A Canadian Cat said:

How are they keeping these long range drones in contact with the remote pilot?

They could use the Russian cellular network, for instance. Shouldn't be that hard to get a Russian SIM.

Or maybe they don't need to at all. Oil refineries are big and very stationary targets. With modern vision systems, this could be preprogrammed as well.

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Posted (edited)
25 minutes ago, poesel said:

They could use the Russian cellular network, for instance. Shouldn't be that hard to get a Russian SIM.

Or maybe they don't need to at all. Oil refineries are big and very stationary targets. With modern vision systems, this could be preprogrammed as well.

My rational guess is also pre-programming.

But that is not I want it to be.

What I imagine is Ihor and Danylo from the UA SOF in a jeep with a 60mm mortar in the trunk, 1000s of km behind the frontline like in the good old stories of 2022. 

This is what the dreams of men are made of. 

Edited by Carolus
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3 hours ago, sburke said:

The war will not end regardless of the US.  This is Ukraine's decision and EU support will continue.  Not sure why you assume the EU will just follow the US on this.

Yup.  This is what I was talking about on the previous page.  If Trump gets elected he has said he'll do two things:

1. Abandon support for Ukraine

2. Abandon support for NATO

Why on Earth would NATO member countries throw in the towel on supporting Ukraine because someone who spent 4 years berating and disrespecting them them says so?  No way.  And even if NATO caved that doesn't prevent member nations from continuing to aid Ukraine.

The pulling back of US support for Ukraine will be bad for Ukraine, no doubt about it, but it isn't the deciding factor.  Ukraine deciding to keep fighting is.  And I don't know why they would surrender to Russia just because Trump wants to finally get his hotel in Moscow.

Steve

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9 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:

In the event of the Trump Russia anti woke alliance, I am rooting for Europe against them. If that makes me a dirty commie traitor so be it. 

The upside for Europe is that it would be stronger for this in the long run.  Making Europe stronger and more self reliant would come at the expense of American power and influence.  It's hard to imagine how that makes America "Great" at all, not to mention "Again".

Steve

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